Just played through and I thought it was really great, not perfect but pretty damn good.

Pros:The humor was spot on, I personally found it much much funnier than HTR.The music was awesome.I found the difficulty to be slightly too easy but nothing that detracts away from the fun of the game.

Cons:My major gripe was that by re-using the 3D models in places cheapened the whole affair, I may be wrong but in the dream Seq isn't the blacked out guy the same model as the guy who works on the Cow Race Game in Bone?

Also the place feels quite sterile, the whole lighting needs to be toned down it's just way to bright and it kind of kills the atmosphere.

My only complaints about the game were visual the rest was spot on if you ask me.. not that anyone was, but you know.

The game looks fantastic. The graphics look much better than I expected.

The voices were much like the originals, so top marks there guys.

Decent story, with fun characters.

It's Sam and Max!

Game was a good (read: easy) introduction back into adventure gaming, which I've barely touched since Grim Fandango.

Puzzles weren't too obscure.

Relatively amusing (not 'hilarious' as some have said)

Telltale were definitely the right people to do this game. You have my faith in successfully bringing back the adventure game genre to the masses.

Cons

At the same time as it looking fantastic, it would have been awesome to have used the same comic styling as the original game, rather than the 3D models. Even so, once out on the street the design was ace. Its not really necessarily something I'd even want changing, at least not for the current series. In truth, it may be above Telltale games and their current game engine tools to do something like that anyway.

The delivery of Sam's lines just seemed to be a little flat. Lacking in any emotion.

As has been said, this game is short. Waaay to short. Which is a bit of problem when the game has little to no replayability.

The game seemed a little lacking in scale. Outside of their office and the street, we only saw one other place, and that was for a very small segment in the game.

A little too much compression on the audio in the game. Remember that most people using the game download service WILL have fast connections, and that most demos tend to be over 100mb nowadays! So don't worry about keeping the game download size to something small, unless Gametap say its a major requirement!

A widescreen option would have been nice, for my laptop screen (similar to what Company of Heroes uses).

Although some have maybe said otherwise (ie. the Tom Cruise lookalike on the TV at the end), but this series appears to be a number of small stories, rather than this being Part 1 as I thought it was. A storyline that ran throughout, would have been far better, but I can live with this format as long as you give us a PROPER story next time.

Seems obvious to say it, but the game was a little too Americanised! In other words, please take into account us European gamers (I'm in the UK), who might not understand the usage of certain words in puzzles. I found the Psychoanalysis a little tricky in the word association bit - I mean who was that Emmy winning woman?

And last but not least... The game was CONSTANTLY crashing on me. Every 5-10mins, when entering/exiting a room or building, the game would crash. It was 50/50 whether the game might crash, and it was highly irritating. I'm using a Macbook Pro, with Windows XP installed via Boot Camp. It's the 1.8ghz model, which has always been fine on every other PC game before. I'll get the next Episode, but if it happens again I won't be able to continue with the series. Which is a real bastard if so.

Don't get me wrong, the list of Cons may be bigger than the Pros, but it didn't impact too much on my enjoyment. And I think the reviews have been justified; I think Gamespots may be closest to the mark.

Anyway... welcome back Sam and Max and well done on an ace job on a game that I've been waiting aaaaaages for. How about Full Throttle 2 next?

Just a small notice, I didn't have any crash in the game, using also a Mac with BootCamp (XP SP2 for games). It's an iMac CD, so, except if you have a Core2Duo, we have pretty the same hardware... it's strange, there must be threads where you can put your crashlog to help telltale surround the problem in their engine

It's been so long since I played HtR that I not able to compare it, which is probably a good thing. That said, here goes:

Pros:

- Sam n' Max are back! 'nuff said!

- There was no part of the game that felt rushed or tacked on, except maybe the driving bits, which were just generally confusing.

- Several bits put a big smile on my face.

- The dream sequence was a great idea.

- I'd heard several bad things about Max's voice, but I loved it.

- Alternating between Sam 'n Max during the interrogation was great. More please!

Cons:

- I had a "that's it?" moment just before the final scene when I realised the end was coming up. That's the downer of episodic releases. Even for an episode though it felt short.

- While you started with several puzzles to solve, they were mainly self-contained in a single location with little cross-solving. The only cross I can think of is the tear gas launcher.

- I'll add my voice to the calls for a bit more difficulty. Actually I think the difficulty level for Culture Shock is fine, as long as it's intended only as a primer. If the rest of the season is at the same difficulty, that's a problem.

- Dedicated right-click 'look at' command, please! :-)

- Sam's voice was fine, but a little too soporific. I know he's the straight guy of the double act, but I think he needs just a little more life.

- Max spends too much time talking about crazy stuff, and not enough time *doing* crazy stuff. Funniest part of the game is right at the beginning after he drops Jimmy. It's just the look on his face. His character comes out more there than in anything else he says in the game (because he certainly doesn't *do* anything else). I do like how he just randomly wanders around.

- Connected to the previous point. I have two words - "Use Max"! Heck, one of these days, maybe Max should use Sam! In order for Use Max to be a workable non-hardcore feature, it would need to be rewarding (as in funny) most of the time it's attempted, even if it doesn't progress the game.

- While it was chuckle-worthy, it just wasn't hilarious. Sam 'n Max have high standards to live up to when it comes to this! :-)

- The dream sequence was too short, for some reason I was expecting it to be a whole act in itself. I was to be greatly disappointed.

Anyway - I hope this is useful and I look forward to the next installment! :-)

- Max spends too much time talking about crazy stuff, and not enough time *doing* crazy stuff. Funniest part of the game is right at the beginning after he drops Jimmy. It's just the look on his face. His character comes out more there than in anything else he says in the game (because he certainly doesn't *do* anything else). I do like how he just randomly wanders around.

I agree. That part is absolute perfection. Hopefully once the game moves into more adventurous locations, we'll see more of that.

I'm not so sure I'm liking the episodic feel. Its too much like the TV series? Very linear.

See - I went completely the other way with that, I really enjoyed the 'episode' - I thought it was kinda fun having the adventure completely self-contained...

I had a laugh for a couple of hours, really enjoyed the adventure, and because it didn't have an annoying cliff-hanger ending I felt quite satisfied with the whole thing once it was complete.

For the series it would be cool if there was an overall story arc, but I found it kinda refreshing that the adventure was self-contained (as opposed to every other episodic game I've played to date), though at the same time, gave it an old-skool TV cop series, which I think works really well with the S&M universe?

[*]Voice: Yep I know I put Voices in Pros too but heres the rub. Though Sam's voice is about right, his delivery is atrocious. It sounds like he is either stoned or just come out of a coma. There is no bite or wit to his one liners.

I thought that too - The deadpan is cool but a little more inflection wouldhave rocked (and, I reckon, made his one liners even funnier)

SAM: Somebody once told me that the contents of a lava lamp make a good hand cream.MAX: That was me.SAM: Which is why I haven't tried it.

I really like the delivery/execution of that dialogue, even though it's not inherently the most hilarious thing ever written. Also, the way Sam is talking while his back is turned to the camera gives me warm, fuzzy memories of Hit the Road.